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Conflict Resolution: When Should Leaders Step In?

If you’ve recruited effectively, your workplace is full of diverse employees with differing strengths and weaknesses. They also have unique ideas and communication styles, so it only makes sense that they’ll butt heads from time to time. In fact, 60-80 percent of all difficulties in organizations come from strained relationships among employees.

While on the surface it seems undesirable, correctly managed conflict can provide a source of growth and creativity within your organization. What matters is not whether conflict does or does not exist — it does — but whether your team is ready to handle it. The team that understands how to strategically approach conflict will build long-term cohesiveness, and the team that doesn’t will need leadership to step in.

Diagnosing Conflict and Moving Forward

Because conflict can negatively affect job performance, morale and eventually sales and company performance, leaders need to first educate themselves and then help their team learn how to handle conflict effectively. Here are three steps employers should take when dealing with conflict:

Diagnose the conflict.

From verbal disagreement and individual differences to physical violence and verbal harassment, there are different levels of conflict. The first step is to identify whether it’s a conflict in opinion, personality, leadership and management style or values.

Identify a goal.

NextNext, identify the goal that your team would like to achieve. Do you want employees to reach a mutual state of agreement? Do you want one decision to be reached? Focus on the solution and what steps each party needs to take to achieve results as a team.

Focus on opportunity.

Although conflict can cause stress at the time, the effects of it can be incredibly valuable. Take this conflict as an opportunity to learn and improve. What is the explicit positive that will come out of this situation? Focus on it, and encourage your team to do so, too.

When conflict comes up in your organization, it’s important to take a step back, think about the situation, and see how this conflict can have a positive impact on the team.

Deciding When to Intervene

Sometimes, conflicts can be settled among employees without a manager intervening. But other times, they hinder performance and need to be taken care of immediately. For instance, workers who take time off because of stress, anxiety, or a work conflict will be off the job for about 21 days. And the typical manager spends 25-40 percent of her time dealing with workplace conflicts. Just think about how much productivity is being wasted!

These statistics prove that leaders aren’t stepping in or staying out of it when they should. While some level of conflict is healthy in the workplace, leadership needs to intervene if it becomes serious or goes on for too long. If you observe any of these warning signs, you need to intervene now:

A sudden change in employee behavior

A sudden change in employee body language or verbal tone

Increased absences

A noticeable reduction in productivity

Increased palpable stress levels

Allowing your employees to work out mild conflicts is a great way to build team morale and save precious management time. But if any of your employees begin exhibiting these behaviors, it’s time to step in and mediate.

When companies stand by policies of open communication and input, there’s no guarantee that everyone will like everything they hear. But if managed correctly, conflict can lead to great decisions, improvements in processes, new ideas, and better relationships.

Originally from Turkey, Zeynep Ilgaz and her husband immigrated to the United States with nothing but two suitcases, a love for each other, and a desire for entrepreneurship. They co-founded Confirm BioSciencesandTestCountry, where Ilgaz serves as president.

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